Oil Prices Jump Above $100 a Barrel for First Time in Four YearsJohn Carney 8 Mar 2026
4:12
Oil prices surged past $110 a barrel on Sunday evening, topping $100 for the first time in nearly four years, as the war in the Middle East entered its ninth day with no end in sight and the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively closed to tanker traffic.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, briefly topped $110 soon after markets opened Sunday evening, while West Texas Intermediate rose to $109.05. Both benchmarks were trading around $60 a barrel in early January.
President Trump on Sunday night sought to reassure Americans that oil prices would come down in short order.
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” Trump said on Truth Social.
The surge follows a record weekly gain last week — Brent climbed 30 percent, its biggest weekly jump in six years — as the conflict that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 has choked off a waterway that normally handles about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.
The Hormuz closure is now forcing producers across the Gulf to throttle back output as onshore storage fills. Iraq has cut production by roughly 60 percent, to between 1.7 and 1.8 million barrels a day from about 4.3 million before the conflict, according to reports. Kuwait declared force majeure on oil exports over the weekend, and Abu Dhabi has begun trimming output at offshore fields as well. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is racing to reroute crude shipments to its Red Sea port of Yanbu via its East-West pipeline, though it lacks sufficient loading capacity and tankers there to fully compensate, Bloomberg News reported.
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https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2026/03/08/oil-prices-jump-above-100-a-barrel-for-first-time-in-four-years/
